Eras10, there was no way Jetstone could win with Wanda alive on the ground, not with the way multipliers work. Their ground army without Ossomer's bonus was much weaker than it was before Ossomer's capture while Wanda's army probably got a boost from the fall and the joining of any Jetstone soldiers in the atrium.

This is, in my opinion, the gist of it. Before Ossomer got decrypted, this was about a toe to toe battle. It was JS last stand, at the capitol, with every reserve force availible called in; against GK's unstoppable steamroller. But thanks to the fact that JS had been manuevering for a few turns while GK was marching; JS had a chance to put some tactical plans into motion and even up the numbers game with bonus stacking. Then GK stole Ossomer's bonus. That not only lowered JS over all availible modifiers, it allowed GK to split it's force into two armies, each with a SoJS warlord bonus of at least +8. That heavily swung the edge into GK's favor; in fact, had it not been for Charlie's turn ending spell, I don't think it would have even been much of a battle. More like a rout that could either have been mind bogglingly effective, or won them the city while forcing them to pause and regroup; depening on the tactics of the ground game.

I'm begining to think that this round will go to Charlie. Parson took the victory in Book 1 with no challenger left standing to argue, but this time Charlie realises what calibur opponent he's playing with and has been laying the groundwork for this fight since the volcano went ka-blooey. Which goes in with what Wanda told him about being a tool of Fate and loosing a great deal.

When the GK dwagons were stuck in airspace, GK was screwed not because they were so horribly outnumbered, but because they COULDN'T FIGHT BACK. They were stuck in airspace, with all the archers having all the time in the world to line up, fire, reload, etc, with the dwagons being unable to touch the tower to crush them. That's why it was going ot be one-sided.

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First, Jack thought that Wanda might keep the GK forces going even against the masses archery and tower defenses by "catching them as they fell" i.e. decrypting units to take another round of arrows to finally remove from combat. So it wasn't "established and agreed to by all sides" that the GK air force was completely screwed. Screwed, yes, but they had a chance with Jacks plan. It's just that Parson's plan was even better.

Second, the premise is "with Wanda alive on the ground", and with her there she can and did do something that she simply could not from the air: Kill and decrypt JS units to supplement the GK forces. This does the old double hit to the unit count, every dead JS unit becomes a decrypted GK unit. This is playing right to the strengths of the 'pliers. It also did what you've mentioned: Took the air force out of the effective JS archery and tower defense area. JS might have been able to shift forces down to fire more effectively, but it's also likely that those units would simply have done some damage to the GK forces and then have become GK forces themselves, again shifting the unit count by two instead of one for each JS unit slain. I seem to recall that Tram was going to make just such a thrust, and look where that got him.

Third, saying that "all Jetstone would have had to do was kill the decrypted siege dragons" is kinda like the mice saying "all we need to do is bell the cat and we'll know when it's coming." But who is going to bell the cat?How using capslock wins arguments:

I'm going to stick with Oberon here, don't have the patience for elsewhere.

Regarding whether they had enough to wipe out everything twice over with just tower archers and casters via Jack's plan - Jack thought there was a chance that 'something might survive to flee next turn', more less. I left a plus or minus 20% in there. It doesn't really matter, because all they had to do was take out the decrypted siege dragons, and they would have had at least a stalemate.

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This is playing right to the strengths of the 'pliers. It also did what you've mentioned: Took the air force out of the effective JS archery and tower defense area.

That's how it was depicted, but you're missing my point. It doesn't make much sense that they burned their tower archery so ineffectively. But what really happened was subtler than that - arrows were randomly blanketing the space - it would have been very effective at causing mass casualties in an army. It was just ineffective at killing wanda specifically, not to mention the decrypted warlords, for that matter. I,e, ineffective at hitting a handful of small specific units in a wide empty area. Which brings up, again, the question of why they did it.

The same tactic would have been a lot more effective wiping out the purple dwagons after they were mass decrypted. Jack foolamanced wanda while she was passive, but you can't be veiled while you attack. The purple dwagons would have been extremely visible, and it would have beggared belief that 300 tower archers couldn't have killed 10-20 purple dragons. They're shooting down into an open square, how crappy could they be? How crappy *should* they be? Not that crappy.

I'm leaving out the question of if the tower spells can't be directed against the garrison on the ground for some very weird reason. Let's just say that would be odd.

Meanwhile, the atrium and the rest of the garrison were (atrium) or could have been (dungeons) evaced. With the purple dwagons gone, there is no siege to get into the tower. Decap is now out for this turn. Taking the garrison is also out (tower is garrison). At the very least, you have a stalemate. Where does GK get more siege on their next turn, either?

But you didn't need a stalemate, because Wanda and the pliers are not unbeatable in a fight. If they are, this is a dumb system. But they're not. The pliers make it neccessary to subtract their combat power faster than loss of your own units adds it back to them. That's a hurdle, but not an insurmountable one.

The Ossomer thing is a red herring. They leave him in airspace. He's irrelevant to the GK battle. Again, the Artemis skirmish happened when Wanda was in the city, giving her bonus, and it looked pretty even to me. Artemis was exactly one level lower than Ossomer. Jetstone had tens of Warlords in the space, and warlords add leadership bonuses to exactly one stack. In a 3000 vs 300 battle, maybe Wanda's personal stack is "unbeatable", meaning has higher bonuses than whatever Jetstone is leading, but everything else is extremely beatable, especially after you've massacred all the dwagons from above with the tower archery where they still cannot hit you back, because the tower is barricaded and the first thing you do is kill all the purples.

The only reason the siege worked is that the 300 tower archers just stood there and watched, because they'd blown all their ammunition trying to hit one veiled unit via area fire across an entire zone. it was stupid. Tramennis had a lot on his mind, but he handled it badly. Incredibly badly.

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JS might have been able to shift forces down to fire more effectively, but it's also likely that those units would simply have done some damage to the GK forces and then have become GK forces themselves, again shifting the unit count by two instead of one for each JS unit slain. I seem to recall that Tram was going to make just such a thrust, and look where that got him

.

This is conflating many things. Consider this sequence:

#1. Wanda, Jack, and a few Decrypted warlords and Hobgobwin knights are hiding among the atrium corpses.

Instead of:

The tower burns all its archery trying to shoot wanda via area fire while hiding, then is helpless once the army is decrypted to intervene, try this:

#2. Trammenis sends down a party of, oh, 20 archers and a caster to blow the veil.#3. Wanda is now forced to decrypt something to protect herself or risk being found helpless and immediately killed.#4. The other 280 archers, having held fire until someone could see Wanda can now start shooting at Wanda and her group directy instead of spraying the atrium. The 20 archers on the ground can start shooting at the decrypted guys. If GK is going to charge the ground party, their location is clear and the inaccessible tower archers can now start raining death on Wanda directly.

Trammenis was right to understand the offensive nature of what had happened and the potential threat to Slately, but beyond that, he panicked and threw away his massive firepower advantage. There's just no way 300 archers shooting down into a square should have unable to kill Wanda. And whether on the ground or in the air, GK still couldn't move. Still had no ability to force engagement and bring the Decryption beam to bear except briefly in the evac transition period.Except against the tower. And if you are shooting at the tower, the tower can shoot at you. Like I said, they shot their bolt on the equivalent of a hat held over the fence rail.

And even after they wasted all their archery, like i said, Jetstone had their entire defense force against an elite subset of GK's forces. It shouldn't have been an even fight, even with decryption working. Deceyption is a great way to get a ton of cheap units and adds a lot of hitting power to Wanda's personal stack. It shouldn't allow you to win a straight fight outnumbered 10-to-1 with reasonably even-quality forces. Maybe a 2-to-1 fight, but not a 10-to-1.

Slately is depicted as an idiot for telling Jetstone to charge as soon as GK starts killing their own mounts. That plan had the highest risk, i.e. of being at the losing end of a decryption cascade and handing wanda the army. But by any reasonable estimate of the competing orders of battle, it should have been a good play.

But even for people who think that the Decryption machine is unbeatable in a direct fight - I think that would be a very silly thing to be true - a version of Trammenis' "death from above" plan, except with intelligent assessment and implementation, a little ground pressure to flush out the decryption before burning your archery, should have worked just fine without even needing to fight any real ground battle at all.

I'm back where I started, which is that GK has looked more powerful during this game than they should have actually been

Since archery is independent of combat, and since GK's Flying Wedge of Doom tends to have wanda right out front, or at least in the hex where combat is taking place, shouldn't someone have sniped her by now? Seriously. My advice for the next battle against GK is camp somewhere with high ground, conceal something with a ranged attack on said high ground, and, when Wanda enters the hex, shoot her. The casters are insanely vulnerable, but they never seem to die.

Or how about traps? Are dirtamancers the only means of setting traps in Erfworld? And why wasn't Jack D.R.T. (Dead Right There) after the veil was blown during the attempt at stealing Ossomer back on Expository Bridge? Why didn't someone shoot him again after accidentally shooting him the first time? I know, I know, archery is exactly as effective as the story needs it to be. Rob's storytelling is so good and the action varied and nuances enough so that the Stormtrooper moments are hardly noticed.. hey, that's the difference between good fantasy war and bad fantasy war.

I'm not really complaining. Real stories, real characters, making real mistakes. It's hard to make a good story when the Wanda juggernaut is stopped in Unaroyal after they hire their own dirtamancer to drop a building onto Wanda's disasterously exposed, army-leading stack.

Use it or lose it. Have the archery bomb as you evacuate to eliminate friendly fire. Then charge in from all directions. If you shoot while you're attacking you deal friendly fire which can be nasty with decryption, especially if you outnumber the enemy.

I would have used less arrows myself and saved some just in case since you're gonna hit diminishing returns as you croak more and more enemies. But if they were considering an all out attack (not a bad idea vs something that risks a decryption tidal wave) I can't really blame Trem for this strategy.

Wanda blundered too by decrypting everything immediately upon arrow cessation. She assumed that Jetstone was out of ammo, which may have been wrong.

Keep in mind too that Trem's been spending his time as a diplomat and is out of practice. Not to mention the king.

I'm not sure if this has been mentioned or not but creating golems is NOT casting. So that little argument about if Ace is incapacitated or not isn't settled for sure. I for one suspect he just suffered some sort of nasty injury that disables him, but doesn't incapacitate.

Since no one here's mentioned it yet, I had to register just to point it out:

The reason Parson is using martial arts instead of using the pointy end is because of the Shredder gauntlet, which gives him the Shredder's fighting capabilities. Why else would an item that looks like that exist? That damn kick was always worse than the sword in the arcade version, anyway, so it's no surprise that Parson instinctively chose it.

eras10:line-of-sight might come into play here. When the Dwagons and riders are in the air they can be seen by the archers ("target the yellows"), but when they are in the atrium the archers fire indirect fire, same as at the battle at Exposition bridge. Don't think any rule has been mentioned but indirect frie should be a fair bit less effective then direct fire.

I'm not sure if this has been mentioned or not but creating golems is NOT casting. So that little argument about if Ace is incapacitated or not isn't settled for sure. I for one suspect he just suffered some sort of nasty injury that disables him, but doesn't incapacitate.

Thank you! I had only a vague idea that was the case, but couldn't remember a source.

I think that should make a strong case for incapacitation, because again, there are different kinds of incapacitation, not just one single state. But all share the common bond of can't move, fight or cast, and Ace explicitly can't move at least.

Slicer wrote:

Since no one here's mentioned it yet, I had to register just to point it out:

The reason Parson is using martial arts instead of using the pointy end is because of the Shredder gauntlet, which gives him the Shredder's fighting capabilities. Why else would an item that looks like that exist? That damn kick was always worse than the sword in the arcade version, anyway, so it's no surprise that Parson instinctively chose it.

I would not have caught that, but it may be just the kind of thing Rob would throw in. Did the kick have knock-back as well?

eras10:line-of-sight might come into play here. When the Dwagons and riders are in the air they can be seen by the archers ("target the yellows"), but when they are in the atrium the archers fire indirect fire, same as at the battle at Exposition bridge. Don't think any rule has been mentioned but indirect frie should be a fair bit less effective then direct fire.

It's possible that you are correctly describing the mechanism that was in use. Less clear is why standing on an elevated position and shooting down into a courtyard should actually be considered indirect fire. Or an atrium with the roof blown off.

Anyway, this may have been happening, but since Tram understood what Jetstone was doing soon after it happened.. arguably the only way to explain his tactical decisions is to assume he had no idea whether anything was being decrypted down there or what was happening in the atrium at all.

The tower borders the airspace, in Erfworld 'game' mechanics. Physically, it is because the tower has a clear view of the airspace. Archers could see what they were shooting at, and aim.

The archers did not have a clear view of their targets in the courtyard. They were just firing blindly, arcing their arrows so they would land at the approximate location. Most of the archers were standing far enough back on the tower top that they cannot see the courtyard ground.

It probably functions similar to the blind mechanics in the recent text update. An experienced soldier may be able to compensate slightly, with some other form of input like sound, touch/vibrations, or even scent. Even then, the archers were up in the tower, far from the units they were trying to croak, so they had little to nothing to go on.

Once Wanda 'found leadership', the entire stack - her, Jack, and the dwagon - all gained bonuses as well from her newly acquired warlord, who also gained a bonus from Wanda and her artifact, possibly increasing the bonuses he provided to the rest of the stack. The dwagon itself was at full hits, had Wanda's bonus and an artifact bonus and croakamancer-boosted warlord bonus, and it had armor plating and wings to use to shield the group. All that, versus arrows which were not even aimed at their targets.

Now, if Tramennis had each line of archers advance to the railing, take aimed shots at active units in the courtyard, and then fall back once their ammunition was depleted, I would imagine Jetstone would have done better. Possibly even taken out the entire stack. He did make the right decision regarding evacuation. The surviving drop group was small even after decryption of a bunch of enemy units, but they had some powerful dwagons on their side. Jetstone would have been resupplying GK's losses due to the pliers. Those losses then become the front lines of GK's forces, so the powerful units get shields, and Jetstone ends up fighting themselves, essentially. If Jetstone did break through that line, GK would just have to do a red+green combo attack, decryption, and Jetstone is back to fighting their decrypted units again. I'm not saying it would be an overwhelming or guaranteed victory for GK, if they won the surviving group would still be small, but Jetstone would be wiped out.

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Yes. In fact, pretty much every boss in that game had one. A lot of the time, there weren't any frames of animation before impact- just BAM, say goodbye to a good chunk of your health and welcome to the other side of the screen. If he really is fighting like an old arcade character, then of course he can do things like instantly switch his grip.

I kinda wanted to see Parson punt Slately so hard that he spun off into the sky Team Rocket style.

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eras10:line-of-sight might come into play here. When the Dwagons and riders are in the air they can be seen by the archers ("target the yellows"), but when they are in the atrium the archers fire indirect fire, same as at the battle at Exposition bridge. Don't think any rule has been mentioned but indirect frie should be a fair bit less effective then direct fire.

It's possible that you are correctly describing the mechanism that was in use. Less clear is why standing on an elevated position and shooting down into a courtyard should actually be considered indirect fire. Or an atrium with the roof blown off.

Anyway, this may have been happening, but since Tram understood what Jetstone was doing soon after it happened.. arguably the only way to explain his tactical decisions is to assume he had no idea whether anything was being decrypted down there or what was happening in the atrium at all.

Hard to understand, and surmountable per above.

J

You, and we all in fact, keep forgetting that the air space around the tower was surrounded by Archons, units notorioulsy difficult to fight because of their wide variety of magical abilities and speed. The king and all his top casters were on top of that tower, relatively exposed. Only the archers and the tower spells were keeping them at bay (and the fact that out of turn they could not engage first).It was to be expected that if they could engage against the king they could finish him off in seconds. Which in the end they actually did.So Tramennis was no fool to order to leave them alone and to not use the tower spells. At least not until after he got the one critical weakness of his side out of the direct line of fire.

Also, the whole point of the atrium was to shield units from attack from above. The yellow dragons had made big holes in the roof, but there is no reason to assume they had completely removed it. That means there was no way for direct shots into the atrium. With Wanda on the ground and able to revive any fallen unit Jetstone was, as Trammenis commented, in very serious trouble. The volley he ordered was to try for a lucky hit. The archers would have been able to shoot down moveless dwagons hovering in the air before them, but once it became a ground battle the archers were mostly useless until they could be brought into the courtyard. And any stabber getting into the courtyard stood a better than even chance to be croaked by a courtyard full of dwagons (arguably one of the most powerful units of erfworld), and immediately being healed up and added to Wanda's army. After all the courtyard was not an open field and entrance was through a limited number of doors that each could easily be guarded by a of couple of dwagons.In the end Wanda and Jack did something very similar to that battle plan. They entered the dungeons and captured the portal room, croaking and decrypting any jetstone unit they encountered. Doing the same in the courtyard would have been riskier, but likely possible as well.So, Tramennis was not that foolish to order that volley. At that point in the battle the archers were all but played out except for that one off chance to croak Wanda before she could create an army out of a courtyard of croaked units. It didn't work that way, but to a large part that was because a certain Jetstone warlord got in the way of an arrow that might have croaked Wanda otherwise...

If you think that even after the fall and initial Decryption Gobwin Knob was outnumbered about 10-to-1 - that sounds about right to me, Jetstone had forces to wipe out 1000 GK ground units and was planning a massive capital defense battle - then the only conclusion is that Jetstone screwed up pretty hardcore letting this get that close, and Parson's plan wasn't all that good, and he got lucky.

Actually they didn't really - not in a convincing fashion. Don't forget Jetstone's original plan - believing Ansom was leading a column similar to the one he led against GK in book 1 - was to hold GK at the bridge until Haggar's column of heavies arrived and then fall back to the city. When everything went bad for GK Haggar had left, and most of the Jetstone heavies were left out in the field with insufficient move to get back to the city.

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Tramennis understood the point of what was happening quickly - saving the barrage of arrows for after the mass decrypt would have been a lot smarter, but he burnt them going after wanda in the most wasteful way possible

Which wouldn't really have changed the fact it wouldn't have been hard to get a lot of the decrypted forces to relative safe positions in the Atrium even then. The best chance of getting a lucky strike was in the moments of everyone briefly incapacitated out in the open.

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There were 600 archers in the battle, say half that in the tower. If, even with foolamancy, 300 archers volleying from tower was an ineffective tactic for wiping out Wanda and the handful before the mass decrypt, then Trammenis never should have tried it. He doesn't seem stupid. Why would he waste such a powerful force like that? The archers were basically spent by the time the siege started, or they would have wiped out the beseigers.

There was no way for the archers on the walls to fire into the atrium, and the ones on the tower didn't have a clear shot. Their volleys were coming close to Wanda though, so she got lucky.

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The bottom line is Jetsone had enough before the battle to wipe out all the dragons with just spells and archers, and then suddenly once they landed Jetstone didn't have enough even to take out the purples - and it appeared to be because they blew 90% of their arrow ammo uselessly before the decrypt. Either they blew it on something very unlikely to work at killing Wanda for no reason when alternatives, like having the archers descend into the atrium, were available, or else it should have worked.

When the dwagons were suspended helplessly in the air like big sitting ducks and couldn't retaliate and could have been made to bear the brunt of everything the archers (including those on the walls), tower defense and casters could have chucked at them - and even then Jack thought there was the potential for enough of them to survive the turn to be able to beat a hasty retreat once GK's next turn started if they were smart.

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Frankly, considering Wanda had to reveal her location to decrypt *anything*, including the dragon they hid under and Jetstone had no trouble targeting specific units before the big scrum, there's no way she should have lived through to her mass decrypt. And once she went off to the dungeon, the tactical cascade was off the table in the courtyard. At that point, the banzai charge Jetstone was just getting around to a few strips ago was on the table. The amount of time it took them to "get organized" was story useful, but silly. Duty should have compelled every Jetstone warlord in the city to lead every unit against Sylvia from the moment the first purple breathed, and, frankly, Jetstone should have been able to stomp them flat with Wanda off in the dungeon, bonuses or not. Bonuses should not be that powerful, 3000 vs. 300.

They didn't know Wanda wasn't still in the courtyard. And when were they targeting specific units? We've observed that archer type warlords - like Archer and Artemis - can pull off amazing shots when they actually are in a position to do so (and all reasonably close range). Like when they have a clear line of sight. The guys on tower had no such option. Even if they came right over to the edge and leaned over they wouldn't be in a great spot for sniping with bow and arrow.

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And if Jetstone outnumbered GK that badly - and we all agree they ought to have - why did Charlie's/Slately's counterattack look a lot less lopsided? yes, they marched a column away instead. Why? Why did that fight go so badly that the Dollamancer had to order a suicide bombing? It didn't look to be going well to me. Yes, dwagons are tough, but cmon - Artemis took out seven with one stack. Why didn't Jetstone use those forces? Why didn't Charlie force them to, more units being better to kill Parson with than less?

Huh? Because it wasn't a counterattack. It was cover for another plan - Trem left with everything except the suicide squad that went in to rescue Cubbins and cover Slately going for the throne. It was never intended to take the courtyard (Ace got lucky).

Slately is dead. Trem is the heir and current Slately dies at the end of this turn. So Trem wouldn't have been able to risk himself in the battle. They don't know Wanda isn't there anymore. Artemis and her team of commandos were exceptional warriors who knew exactly what to do - the team that went with Slately didn't have a high leval archer warlord and knights with it. It looked to mainly be a couple of warlords and a bunch of stabbers and pikers.

And probably because Charlie knows his limits/has his own plan. He's not going to try and strong arm Slately like he did Haggar (and it is possible Charlie wasn't sure when the plan was made that Wanda wouldn't be back as well).

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This is nonsense. To repeat myself: when Wanda's army was floating in the air, the forces and dwagons out there were not tough enough to survive the archers and casters. Clearly established and agreed to by all sides.All sides also thought that those archers and casters and tower spells were enough to wipe out most to all of that force even if all the living units were decrypted by Wanda as they were killed. That was Jack's original plan, and his description still implied overwhelming losses. What actually happened was worse for GK in terms of hits left to absorb, because GK killed most of their dragons without Jetsone needing to waste juice / arrows.

No, not accepted by all sides since Jack had a plan to survive the turn with Wanda intact. The difference being - GK couldn't fight back. Jetstone would have been able to blast them with everything and GK - being stuck off turn - wouldn't have been able to kill the tower. And even then there was a chance Wanda would have survived to fly way when it was all done.

Plus - antiaircraft defense are made for shooting down planes. They stop being as effective if the planes can get below them. It's like saying "but the Deathstar had all those turbolasers and things on its surface, how come the x-wings survive?" - because they drop into a canyon that gets them below the worst of the anti-air defenses.

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The added Jetstone infantry are meaningless - all Jetstone would have had to do was kill the decrypted siege dragons, and Gobwin Knob would have had no way of entering or destroying the barricaded tower. Furthermore, just shooting down all the regular dragons would have left the jetstone infantry by themselves fairly pathetic. A combat bonus doesn't make you survive a larger number of arrows. No, Jetstone had the shooting to kill every dragon in Spacerock twice over, give or take 20% or so, whether they were on the ground, or in the air. And they wasted it, blanketing an area with area fire blindly. If that was going to be totally ineffective at killing Wanda, they should have known it would be so and done something more effective, like moved a component downstairs to shoot at Wanda directly, forcing her to decrypt things to screen her, and otherwise taking aimed shots. They spent 90% of their shooting hitting rocks.

When in the air every archer they had would have been able to actually target and the casters would have been throwing whatever they had into it as well, plus tower defense. And Wanda would only be able to resurrect from a small pool of deceased units, there would be no growing her forces. When in an enclosed space far below only a portion of the archers where able to indirectly volley fire into the area, the tower air defenses can do nothing and the dittomancer could only have doubled the volleys like he was doing out in the field.

And you make that sound so easy - never mind the purples probably wouldn't have been on the front line when Jetstone attacked - the reds and greens would have been. And assuming they successfully killed the purples - then GK simply has to wait out the turn, which with decryption there would have been a reasonable chance of doing. Once GK has their turn again they get to fly away on any surviving dwagons, or torch the city if the reds survived while Wanda flies away. It wasn't a case of "ok, if we destroy the purples they'll be powerless to overcome this big door and it will be impossible for them to escape the perfectly sealed atrium and defeat us, and while we'll be able to pick them off at our leisure".

And again - if there was no shooting at all Wanda would already have been decrypting by the time the squad of archers got down there. So it would be a squad of low level archers vs dwagons, warlords and the growing ranks of decrypted. Not every base archer unit is Artemis or Captain Archer.

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Furthermore, your assumptions about relative strength are blind, unwarranted, and contrary to evidence. Maybe the decrypted dwagons were the strongest individual units in the city, but just because bonuses are nice doesn't mean that numbers have no meaning. Please re-read the Artemis fight, which happened while Wanda was still in the city. You will observe that a single Jetstone high-level knight was weaker than a decrypted dwagon, but four high-level Jetstone knights attacking as a team were *stronger* than a decrypted dragon. Fancy that! If 50 decrypted dragons were stronger enough to conquer the whole of Erfworld on their own, than I think Gobwin Knob wouldn't have bothered making their other 8500 units. However stacking works, when you take enough units on by yourself, some of them are going to have the chance to hit you before you kill them. Numbers matter.

The stack Artemis and her knights attack was unled, or not led by anyone exception if I remember rightly.

Wanda was in the city, but not present for the decrypting. The fight might have gone differently if the knights got back up as they died to fight their fellows, yes? And how many of these high level knights led by a high level warlord with a ranged ability does Jetstone have they have? That is the whole point - numbers will eventually win, sure, the problem being if Wanda was present to be decrypting, with the bonuses she offered (even with no dance fighting) every unit you loose gets back up and starts fighting you and it is tougher than ever. In the immediate short term GK's forces would be growing - the dwagons, knight heavies and warlords are going to take out a lot of stabbers and pikers and low level warlords before the first dwagon dies (look how many appeared to have died in Slately's charge from one fire/gas combo), and those stabbers, pikers and low level warlords are going to be splitting attention from the dwagons, and more pikers and stabbers will be dying and rising.

If you can replenish your forces faster then your enemy can kill you there is a good chance you'll win. If you can replenish them fast enough to really slow how quickly your enemy is killing you, you give yourself more time to figure out something. Wanda wouldn't have been able to do either in the air, on the ground any attack by ground forces would allow her to.

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The Jetstone force was a decapitation strike force meant to assassinate the ruler under surprise, with the rest of Jetstone's forces nearby and unable to assist. When that failed, they were, or should have been by the logical limitations of what they had done so far, overwhelmingly outnumbered. Getting onto the ground and adding 100 Jetstone infantry or so still leaves them massively outnumbered. Rob's created the real-time decryption to be very powerful, but it should not, and does not, mean that Wanda can charge overwhelming forces with whatever she happens to have around and win automatically. If you're killing the other guy five times faster than he's killing you, than your total combat power is decreasing faster than his even if you're gaining back the one fifth of your losses that are his losses.

Have you ever played a Total War game? A siege in them? Notice how the enemy puts a hole or two in your wall and then has to run masses of troops through a small space, usually into guys surrounding them on all sides? A bit like what faced Slately's forced when they attacked? An attack on the atrium would have cost Jetstone dearly. They might have won, but there would be a chance they wouldn't.

For one - Wanda wouldn't have been charging. Jetstone would have. And how exactly are Jetstone killing the GK forces five times faster? Again - did you observe what two breath combos did to Slately's guys charging through the breach? A lot of them died without hitting an enemy. Notice the damage a stack of purples did to the guys on the other side of a big solid door and wall? Now imagine if there was no big solid door and wall in front of masses of infantry.

But that said - there was a very real chance the Jetstone forces could have taken it, if they had charged with everything they had. Both Caesar and Trem knew this. But decryption if a very real concern. It is the big gibbly on the field that makes you doubt yourself and play too cautiously when the only option is to go all in - and with good reason.

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Not one actual participant in that comic thought that Jetstone was "lost" once Wanda was in there. At risk, yes, because now they can attack you instead of being sitting ducks, and they're inside the city with the ruler. Not lost. And GK was tougher than they ought to have been by any consistent portrayal of the capabilities implied.

True - no one said they were definitely lost. Trem never said "we can absolutely do this" - he said he was going to assess and decide if the chances of victory were great enough to risk it. Caesar said if they wanted to have a chance of winning what they would need to do. Definitely no one thought Jetstone was doomed there (especially while retreat was possible) but no one was saying the GK forces were doomed either.

_________________And so my time with the Tardy Elves draws to a close, and I am let to ponder how the experience will... eh, I'll finish later. No need to rush.

Since no one here's mentioned it yet, I had to register just to point it out:

The reason Parson is using martial arts instead of using the pointy end is because of the Shredder gauntlet, which gives him the Shredder's fighting capabilities. Why else would an item that looks like that exist? That damn kick was always worse than the sword in the arcade version, anyway, so it's no surprise that Parson instinctively chose it.

That is a pretty cool thing to notice. I had completely forgotten about that arcade game, so I hadn't even GOTTEN that joke yet. Combine the arcade game reference to the Acheivements reveal and Erfworld suddenly feels more like a videogame tbsg than a table top to me. I wonder if the achievements are tied tot he high score records kept in the library, like someone else suggested; maybe those boring records actually hold more information that Parson originally realized. He might could learn a lot by just checking out some of the strange and epic feats others have accomplished (I can totally see a TON of "Wait, you can DO that?!?!?!?!? moments.).

Yes. In fact, pretty much every boss in that game had one. A lot of the time, there weren't any frames of animation before impact- just BAM, say goodbye to a good chunk of your health and welcome to the other side of the screen. If he really is fighting like an old arcade character, then of course he can do things like instantly switch his grip.

Okay, thanks. And now I'm wondering more than ever if Parson isn't functioning at a different level than all natural-popped Erfworlders. Because this is the only achievement we've ever seen, and we've seen a fair amount of combat. Parson is both a "level 2 Chief Warlord, Special", and a "player, not a gamepiece". So maybe he is interacting with Erfworld as a player as well as a unit. Unless I'm just reading too much into a pop culture reference?

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